Saturday Night Live Skits Affected Presidential Election

Obama Benefited From Comics’ Election Coverage

A poll released Wednesday indicates 10 percent of voters had their voting decision influenced by skits performed on the Saturday Night Live (SNL) television show.  Six percent were more likely to vote for Obama and the remaining four percent became more inclined to pull the lever for McCain after watching the sketches.

“The ‘SNL Effect’ absolutely impacted the election,” said Mike Dabadie, a FirstView survey researcher and former White House pollster.  The overall split for the candidates among SNL viewers went 59 percent for Obama and 39 percent for McCain.

Tina Fey of SNL captured national attention for her physical likeness and dead-on impressions of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska.  Palin later made an appearance on the popular late-night show just as Hillary Clinton did in response to the parodies about her that were also performed by Fey.  Most agree that Fey did a better job of mimicking Palin by virtue of the remarkable physical resemblance between the two. 

The poll also found that while voters were highly concerned about the economy, they were more motivated to vote based upon a desire to restore trust in the government and ensure a better future for succeeding generations.

Dabadie and Dr. Dee Allsop conducted telephone and online surveys that triple screened for age, voter registration and participation in the 2008 election.  The results were grouped to represent the U.S. population in terms of gender, education and ethnicity to produce a 3.1 percent margin of error.

This may in fact be only the first documented case of the “SNL Effect.”  Chevy Chase from the first troupe of SNL frequently took exaggerated pratfalls to satirize President Gerald Ford’s penchant for clumsy physical missteps.  Ford later lost his bid for re-election to President Jimmy Carter.

In those early skits, the audience always knew what was coming; the entertaining part was trying to figure out how Chase would manage to fall down in a seemingly safe environment.  That was some 30 years ago, so the question is how many political fortunes have been won or lost on the altar of SNL producer, Lorne Greene.

There should probably be an investigation of some kind, but as long as SNL steers clear of Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, they’ll probably get off the hook.

Fey has established herself as one of the most gifted comediennes of this generation in any case.  Nobody has earned an invitation to the Obama inauguration more than Tina Fey.

The SNL video clip was unexpectedly pulled from YouTube, as were all Sarah Palin videos. Odd.  Writer to the World^TM  apologizes to the audience for not having a clip to enjoy. YouTube suffers far more as a result though.